Will Opting Out of Affordable Care Act Cost You?

Creatas/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- The new health care law has its share of critics, many of whom say they don't like the mandate that requires Americans to carry some sort of health insurance.

As Brad Herring at Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health points out, there's actually a penalty for not signing up -- but it's only $95 in 2014.

"Penalty actually starts off kinda small over the next year, two years, then it kinda grows over time," he says.

The question is, however, will enough healthy people sign up to lower costs for everyone?

Katherine Baker with the Harvard School of Public Health says this whole thing is so new, nobody really knows. But she thinks all the publicity surrounding the new health care law might play a role.

"Because it's known that there is a mandate, there may be more of an effect than you might think, based on just a $95 trade-off, and of course that penalty will phase up in the years following 2014," Baker says.